Paul O'Neill, the blunt-spoken former head of Alcoa Corp who was fired after two rocky years as U.S. President George W. Bush's Treasury secretary, died on Saturday at the age of 84 at his home in Pittsburgh, the Wall Street Journal reported.
- Paul O’Neill, the blunt-spoken former head of Alcoa Corp who was fired after two rocky years as U.S. President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary, died on Saturday at the age of 84 at his home in Pittsburgh, the Wall Street Journal reported.
O’Neill served as the Republican Bush’s first Treasury secretary, from January 2001 to December 2002, during a period of in-fighting within the administration and tough economic times worsened by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. It was Cheney, his friend dating to the 1970s in President Gerald Ford’s administration and had recruited O’Neill into the Treasury job, who told him that he was fired. O’Neill said Cheney had asked him to say his departure was his own decision, but O’Neill refused.History bore out his concerns over the Bush tax cuts, which along with the costs of Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to soaring U.S. budget deficits in subsequent years.
During his stint as Treasury secretary O’Neill outraged congressional Republicans by calling one of their tax cut measures “show business.” He annoyed others in the administration by telling lawmakers that Bush’s signature tax cut drive was not likely to boost the economy in the short term. O’Neill was born on Dec. 4, 1935, in St. Louis to a family of modest means. After college, he began his career in government in 1961, working for the Veterans Administration. He was named as the No. 2 official in the White House budget office in 1974 and became friends with fellow Ford administration officials Cheney and Alan Greenspan, the future Fed chairman.
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